What he was referring to is the human rights crisis Xinjiang is currently facing.

他指的是新疆当下面临的人权危机。

As chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, Rubio convened a hearing at Senate Office Building1) on Thursday (July 26), to closely follow the situation of Uighur and other Muslim racial minorities’ situation in Xinjiang. This was the US Congress’ first public hearing about this issue.

Many witnesses attending the hearing said that an all-pervasive security system, DNA gathering, large-scale arbitrary detention, cruelty, extreme restrictions on religion and culture … the Chinese government was working hard to turn Xinjiang into the world’s most highly technogical “policing area”.

Ambassador Kelley E. Currie, representative to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, said that from April 2017 on, said that the degree of repression by the Chinese authorities, under the leadership of Xi Jinping, was “shocking”, and even hard to compare with the peak time of the “Cultural Revolution”.

“There are bans on ‘unsusual’ beards, and bans on women wearing combinations of glasses and veils in public squares. Muslims refusing to wear shorts, to smoke, to drink alcohol or to eat pork are regarded as criminals. Even refusing to watch official television station’s programs are proofs of crime,” she said.2)

Gulchehra Hoja is a reporter3) at the Uighur team of Radio Free Asia’s headquarters in Washington D.C.. In February this year, she learned that nearly twenty of her own relatives in Xinjiang had been arrested by the Chinese public security department on that day. Before that, her younger brother had been arrested by police, and locked into a re-education camp.

“Testifying here today, and bringing this up still makes me feel sad. My parents remain trapped, and more than twenty of my relatives remain unaccounted for. It can be said with near-certainty that they have been locked into the Chinese government’s so-called ‘re-education camps’,” she said in tears.

Relatives of her five Uighur colleagues have also been arrested and sentenced in China, and this is only a microcosm of the tragedies going on in countless Muslim households in Xinjiang. According to a number of sources, the number of Uighurs imprisoned in the authorities’ “education and transformation” camps is currently at more than one million.

Well-known Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer told VoA that among her family people, more than thirty people had been arrested. She said that the actual number of Uighurs under arrest could be as high as 2 million, and that many children in the region had been sent to orphanages.

“What is happening in East Turkestan brings to mind the crimes of nazi Germany against Jews during the second world war,” she said. “US Congress should put forward a resolution to close these concentration camps. US officials should earnestly raise the issue of the Uighurs with Chinese officials.”

Kadeer also said that not only Americans, but Chinese people too, should stand up. She hoped to send this kind of message to the Han Chinese through the Voice of America: “Our today (is) their tomorrow.”

热比娅还说，不仅是美国，中国人也应该站起身来。她希望通过美国之音向汉人传达这样一个信息：“我们的今天，（就是）他们的明天。”

Rubio said that it was also disturbing that there were companies that intentionally or unintentionally became helpers in the Chinese authorities’ violations of human rights and privacy. He mentioned Hikvision and Dahua technology company as suppliers of monitoring equipment to the authorities in Xinjiang, and also criticized an American company from Massachusetts for supplying DNA gathering tools to Xinjiang.

He said that some multi-national companies that didn’t like certain positions held by the US government refused to do business with the government, but lobbied in Washington every day, hoping to enter China’s vast markets, turning a blind eye to China’s governing Communist Party’s human rights violations.4)

Also testifying at the hearing were US department of commerce officials, scholars, and journalists. With several lawmakers, from the dimensions of US-Sino relations, they explored the political options of dealing with the issue, including raising world peoples’ attention to the fate of the Uighurs, restricting American companies’ relevant business with China, punishing Xinjiang central government officials based on the Magnitsky act, etc..

Notes

2) from Currie’s written statement (as of July 25, i. e. one day before the hearing):

The scope of this campaign is truly breathtaking: authorities now prohibit “abnormal” beards and the wearing of veils in public, and classify refusal to watch state television, refusal to wear shorts, abstention from alcohol and tobacco, refusal to eat pork, fasting during the holy month of Ramadan, or practicing traditional funeral rituals, as potential signs that individuals harbor extreme religious views.

As I testify before you here today, it grieves me to no end to say that my parents remain under threat, and more than two dozen of my relatives in China are missing – almost certainly held in re-education camps run by authorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

One Comment to “A VoA Chinese article on the situation of Uyghurs and Muslim minorities”

JR. I know I’ve become a pretty trivial creature since the op and becoming a really hot dancer/backup vocalist in a band, but here is one of the more interesting pieces on this network of concentration camps in Xinjiang.